Soutisa Cory wanted to vote for former President Donald Trump when she entered her ward’s polling place in Rochester, New Hampshire.
“It was my oldest son’s first time registering,” she told The Epoch Times.
She had used the Republican primary ballot in 2022, the year her boyfriend, New Hampshire state Rep. Mike Belcher, was on it. Because she hadn’t flipped to undeclared right after voting that year, Ms. Cory was a registered Republican. That meant she should have received the Republican presidential primary ballot on Jan. 23.
But then something strange and discouraging happened. She was handed a Democratic primary ballot.
“I said, ‘I’m not a Democrat.’… When I talked to them and said it needs to be changed, they said, ‘You can’t.’” Ms. Cory recounted.
Mr. Belcher told The Epoch Times that Ms. Cory was sent to the supervisor of the checklist, and he was with her as it all went down.
The supervisor, a local official charged with oversight of voter registration, “seemed to confirm” her status as a Democrat, according to Mr. Belcher.
In New Hampshire, registered Democrats wanting to vote in the Jan. 23 Republican primary needed to have changed their registration in October 2023. The poll workers informed her she could not obtain a Republican ballot.
Ms. Cory felt disenfranchised.
“I was in tears. I felt like my right to vote for who I wanted to was revoked,” she said.
Connections Help
But unlike many other people, Ms. Cory had some powerful and knowledgeable local connections. One was another Republican New Hampshire state representative, Kelley Potenza, who told The Epoch Times that she is friends with Ms. Cory.
Ms. Cory called Ms. Potenza.
“You’re not going to be denied the right to vote. This is ridiculous,” Ms. Potenza recalled telling Ms. Cory.
So, Ms. Cory, Mr. Belcher, and her son went to the city clerk’s office to check her registration.
“Initially, the situation at the [clerk’s] office was going sideways, and it was suggested, rather matter-of-factly, that she was a Democrat,” Mr. Belcher wrote on X in an account of the experience. Ms. Cory confirmed the authenticity of that account to The Epoch Times, including the photograph Mr. Belcher posted of documents that initially listed her as a Democrat.
At the clerk’s office, according to Mr. Belcher and Ms. Cory, Mr. Belcher only got results when he made it clear he was an elected official in the state.
“I placed my legislative ID down on the counter and explained that I’m pretty sure she took the Republican ballot in 22 because myself and another friend of hers was on the ballot,” Mr. Belcher wrote.
The clerk accessed the hand-written records, which proved Ms. Cory right: she was a registered Republican.
According to Mr. Belcher, the clerk said that this was at least the second such incident in Rochester that day.
“The original, hand-written record was correct, but the poll personnel are going off of printed sheets from an electronic database,” Mr. Belcher wrote on X, adding that the incident illustrates another risk of electronic voting.
Ms. Potenza also faulted the poll worker who sent a frustrated citizen all the way to the city clerk.
“They could have easily contacted the city clerk and taken care of it, the person that’s the supervisor of the checklist, but they did not,” she said.
Ms. Cory did ultimately receive the Republican primary ballot to which she was entitled. She finally cast a vote for her candidate of choice, President Trump.
City’s Response
The Epoch Times called, emailed, and visited the Rochester city clerk seeking answers and a fuller explanation as to how Ms. Cory ended up with the wrong ballot and whether there was another incident that day.
Rochester Deputy City Clerk Cassie Givara told The Epoch Times on Jan. 24 that Kelly Walters, the head city clerk, would send a memo to Rochester’s city council concerning what happened with Ms. Cory.
The Epoch Times received a copy of the memo on Jan. 25. In it, Ms. Walters offered an account consistent with what Ms. Cory described.
“I believe this discrepancy to be a matter of simple clerical error,” Ms. Walters wrote.
“However, I can assure you this is not a regular occurrence. We looked into dozens of similar circumstances on Election Day in which a voter was not registered with the party they felt they should be. Almost without exception, it was found that the paper registrations on file reflected exactly what was on the checklist at the polling location,” the memo continued.
“Our aim moving forward is to ensure that Election Staff understands that the Clerk’s Office can be used as a resource on Election Day to verify that the information contained in the Election database and on the printed checklist are supported by the documentation on file in our office.”
Ms. Cory made it clear her frustration went beyond her own experience.
“I was not only disappointed, but I was upset. I was upset, and I was concerned. … How many people is this happening to?” Ms. Cory asked.
Mr. Belcher is drafting a letter to New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella and New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, both Republicans, demanding an investigation of the incident and others that have been alleged. The letter’s co-signatories currently include New Hampshire state Reps. Alicia Lekas, Diane Kelley, Valerie McDonnell, Shane Sirois, and Nikki McCarter, all Republicans.
“While we have heard of report after report of supposed registered Republicans and Independents being spontaneously flipped to Democrat, we have not heard, as of yet, a single report of a Democrat having been flipped to Republican or Independent,” the draft letter reads.
‘Nothing Out of the Ordinary’ in Complaints
In an email to The Epoch Times, Michael S. Garrity, spokesman for the New Hampshire Department of Justice, pointed out that many voters may falsely believe they are independent when they are, in fact, registered with a party as a result of voting in a previous primary.
While New Hampshire voters can return to an independent status immediately after voting in a specific party’s primary, it doesn’t happen automatically.
“You become a registered member of that party unless you fill out a card or sign a list to return to undeclared status with the supervisors of the checklist before leaving the polling place,” reads an “FAQ” webpage operated by the New Hampshire secretary of state.
“Every election there are voters who had previously been undeclared, became registered with a party by voting in a prior party primary, and were upset that as a registered member of that party that they could not currently vote in a different party’s primary,” Mr. Garrity told The Epoch Times.
“This primary, the Election Law Unit has again received several complaints from voters who believed that they should have still been registered as undeclared, but nothing out of the ordinary.”
According to Mr. Garrity, the unit registered “fewer than 20” complaints from voters who erroneously believed they were independent and upset to receive a ballot for the party with which they were, in fact, registered.
He said there were two cases of voters alleging they had been falsely registered with a party other than the one with which they thought they were registered.
In addition, Mr. Garrity said there were “two complaints of voters claiming they were given an incorrect ballot, both of which were corrected prior to the voter voting.”
Mr. Garrity did not comment on Ms. Cory’s case.
From The Epoch Times
